


Giving Up Burdens

by Geoduck



Series: The Time In-Between [5]
Category: Fruits Basket
Genre: Apologies, Family Feels, Fluff and Angst, Forgiveness, Gen, Guilt, Hugs, One-Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-19
Updated: 2020-09-19
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:13:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26541193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Geoduck/pseuds/Geoduck
Summary: Kisa Sohma decides to do something she's never done before.Have a conversation with Kyo.
Relationships: Honda Tohru/Sohma Kyou, Sohma Kisa & Sohma Kyou
Series: The Time In-Between [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1306421
Comments: 4
Kudos: 49





	Giving Up Burdens

Kyo only realized he had been sleeping when he woke up.

He tried to orient himself. He was in the living room, lying on the floor. His hand was being gently shaken. He cracked his eyes open and smiled at Tohru. Or rather, the Tohru he expected to see there.

But this person was much smaller. He blinked his eyes a few times to clear his eyesight and confirm what he suspected: Kisa Sohma was trying to wake him up.

“Kyo-nii? Are you awake?”

Kyo grumbled and tried to clear his throat. Kisa stood up. “I’ll get you some water!”

She padded into the kitchen and a few seconds later brought him a glass. “Here you go.”

Kyo accepted it and drank. “Thanks. You know what time it is?”

“Ah… I think it’s four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty, huh?” Kyo shook his head briefly to clear out the remaining cobwebs. “So, anyway, Tohru’s not here right now. She’s working until seven. I guess you can wait for her if you want, but you might get bored.”

“No… Kyo-nii? I came here to talk to you.”

Momentarily, Kyo thought his head might still be a bit foggy. “To me? You sure?”

Kisa nodded.

Kyo shrugged. “I guess that’s okay. Just a little surprised. Thought you were still a little bit afraid of me.”

“N-no. I was never afraid of you. I was afraid of…” She looked at the wrist that no longer bore a bracelet. “I was afraid of the cat. Not Kyo-nii. I always knew Kyo-nii was kind.”

Slowly, Kyo got a cockeyed grin. He reached over and ruffled her hair. “You tryin’ to butter me up, you little charmer? Okay, what’s on your mind?”

Kisa looked down for a moment. “Kyo-nii, were you sleeping just now because of the weather?”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “When it broke, I thought that meant the end of all of the inconvenient stuff. Nope. I still get exhausted when it rains. What a pain. I mean, all the important stuff is gone, but the little things are still around. I get tired in the rain, chives still taste like sh- crap. Annoying.” He looked at her hair. “Looks like we’re stuck with our crazy hair colors, too.”

“I don’t mind much, anymore. It’s nice to look a little different. My friends can recognize me far away, at least.”

“Guess you never had the problem of tigers suddenly showing up at your school.”

“No. I did have to be a little careful visiting the zoo.”

Kyo chuckled at that.

“Kyo-nii? The reason I wanted to talk to you…” Her face flushed slightly. “I wanted to apologize.”

“What for?” Kyo leaned back slightly. “I don’t recall you ever doin’ anything wrong around me.”

“I did. I said bad things about the cat.”

“Eh. I’m not really bothered by that. The cat wasn’t me, anyway. You said so yourself just now, right?”

“I…” She bowed her head down slightly. “I still feel bad about it. It was mean.”

Kyo shifted where he was sitting. “If it’s gonna be like that, then there’s one thing to do.”

She lifted her head up. “What?”

He lightly poked her on the forehead with his index finger. “Bad.” He smiled. “Okay, you’re forgiven now.”

She bowed her head back down again. “There’s another thing. It’s shameful. You might not want to forgive me.”

“What is it?”

“Those of us in the zodiac. We knew. We knew what was going to happen to the cat. All of us. We knew about the room. We knew and we never did anything.”

A teardrop hit the floor. “We were going to just stand by and let it all happen. Even though Nee-chan would be sad. Even though you would be all alone in that room. We didn’t try to stop it.”

Kisa sobbed quietly.

“Y’know?” Kyo spoke softly. “I’d be lying if I said I never thought about that. Akito told me. He…  _ she _ told me that you all knew. That you all knew, and you didn’t care. That nobody would lift a finger to help me. Not even Kagura. Not even Haru. Not even Kisa. That you all wanted me to go into that room.”

She looked up at him, tears in her eyes. “That’s a lie! We  _ didn’t _ want it! We never wanted it at all! We wanted you to be free.” She squeezed her fists tightly. “But we didn’t do anything. None of us. Not Kagura-nee, and she loved you so much. Haru-nii and Momiji-nii like you a lot too, and none of us did anything.”

She looked down again.

He sighed. “The curse,” he said quietly. “I wanted to say ‘no’ to Akito. I wanted to tell her to go to hell. I wanted to laugh in her face and dare her to try to push me around. But I never did. Yeah, somewhere deep inside, I’m a little bit upset none of you did anything. But I don’t have the right to blame you. Because if Akito told me to go into the room, she wouldn’t have needed to force me. I would have gone in without a struggle. I would have obeyed.”

“Hey, Kisa?” She lifted up her head and looked at him. “Can you keep a secret? You can’t tell anyone, not your mom, not Hiro, nobody, and  _ especially _ not Tohru.”

She thought for a moment and nodded slightly.

“I never told this to anyone, and I can’t really believe I’m telling you. But I think it’s important for me to say. Do you remember the night that Tohru fell?”

Kisa exhaled quietly and nodded again.

“If it had been worse. If Tohru had been permanently injured, or...” Kyo could not bear to mention death explicitly when it came to the love of his life. “If that happened, I was going to ask Akito to lock me up.”

Kisa gasped. “You couldn’t! That would have been so terrible! Nee-chan wouldn’t want that!  _ None _ of us would want that!”

“I know.”

“Nee-chan loves you so much! She worked so hard to break the curse for you.”

“For all of us.”

“No, for  _ you! _ You were the one she was the most worried about. You have to believe me!”

Kyo smiled slightly. “Okay, okay, I give up. I believe you. And I didn’t go to Akito, of course. I chose to stay free, for as long as I could. And now we really are.” He put his hand on her shoulder. “All of us.”

Her eyes still full of tears, Kisa smiled.

“So I can’t really blame you for not doing something that I didn’t even do myself. You didn’t stop it because you couldn’t. Neither could I.”

“But even though I don’t think you’re guilty of anything…” Kyo’s voice sounded slightly different. He averted his gaze slightly. “I’m really happy you apologized anyway. I believe you that you never wanted it to happen.”

“Anyway.” He looked back at her with a crooked smile. “You got hurt, too, right? So maybe I need to apologize to you for not doing anything.”

“But it wasn’t your fault!”

“And mine wasn’t yours either. So let’s just both say ‘I forgive you’, and that’s that, okay?”

Kisa took a deep breath. “I forgive you, Kyo-nii.”

“And I forgive you, little sis.”

And with that, Kyo was knocked to the floor by the thirteen-year-old girl hugging him tightly. She buried her face into his shirt and quietly wept.

Kyo was never comfortable with crying girls. “Hey… you okay? There’s nothin’ to be sad about now. We’re friends, right?”

“I’m… I’m crying ‘cause I’m happy.”

Kyo couldn’t say anything against that. Lately, he had become accustomed to happy tears from Tohru. And even occasionally himself.

He stroked her hair as she continued to hold on to him tightly. “Hey, Kisa? Can you promise something for me?”

She looked up at him with red-rimmed eyes. “What is it?”

“Could you not tell anyone about apologizing? I wouldn’t mind anyone else talking to me about what we were like in the curse, but I don’t want it to happen because hearing about you made them feel obligated. If someone wants to talk to me, I want it to happen because it was their idea, not yours. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“You promise?”

“I promise. Ah, Kyo-nii?”

“What now?”

“You do love nee-chan, right?”

Kyo felt moisture in his eyes. “Course I do. More than anything.”

Despite her tears, Kisa giggled. “I knew that already. But I wanted to hear you say it in person.”

“Sly girl.”

Kisa gave no sign of letting go from Kyo’s torso. Kyo sighed with bemusement. She had never hugged him before, and it seemed like she was making up for lost time now.

She was the third girl who had ever hugged him, after Kagura and Tohru. ‘Pretty poor record for a seventeen-year-old. Only three hugs? But I guess I had a disadvantage.’

It was too bad the curse made them lose so much. ‘What would I have been like if I had a younger sister in my life? Maybe I wouldn’t have been such an angry twerp all the time? It’s possible her life wouldn’t have changed too much, since she had a lot of boys looking out for her already: Yuki, Haru, Momiji, Hiro. I guess I could have been useful at threatening bullies.’

From the corner of his eye, Kyo could see the sky darkening again. More rain. He could feel the heaviness setting in. ‘I should get up…’

It was dark when his eyes opened again. There was a blanket over him. Tohru’s work, of course.

Pins-and-needles in his left hand. No doubt caused by the small ex-tiger resting her head on his upper arm. He carefully maneuvered to let her head down gently as he pulled his arm out from under her. He sat up and stretched, rapidly opening and closing his hand to bring back circulation. He looked up to see Tohru gazing at him with an adoring expression. “Uh, hi.”

“Kyo-kun,” she whispered, “that was the  _ cutest  _ thing I’ve  _ ever  _ seen! You and Kisa all cuddled up together! Absolutely adorable!” Kyo smiled. He didn’t bother telling her that she was far cuter when  _ she  _ was the one snuggled up with Kisa. She would just deny it. He knew how to pick his battles.

“Hey. It’s kinda late for her to be going home, isn’t it?”

“I called her mother already. She’s okay with Kisa spending the night. Shall we wake her?”

Kyo stretched his arms. “I’m feeling okay. Rain must have stopped a while ago. I can carry her upstairs.”

He gently picked her up, his arms supporting her back and upper legs. Light little thing. Not that he had a lot of experience carrying girls. Up until now it had only been Tohru who got the full princess treatment.

He looked at her. Up until now, he hadn’t ever thought all that much about Kisa. Just that she reminded him a little bit of Tohru. She was a girl she had had a tiny amount of contact with, and was good friends with his good friends.

But behind that cute face was a person who felt things deeply, who understood pain, and regret, and loneliness. A child this innocent knew the feeling of guilt. She even sought forgiveness for it.

Amazing.

A girl that innocent, who wore her heart on her sleeve--she needed protecting.

He wouldn’t always be around her, but he was damned if he’d allow anyone to be cruel to her.

“Kyo-kun? Just set her on the far side of the bed.”

“Oh. I was thinking perhaps in my room…”

“I don’t want her to be upset if she wakes up and doesn’t know where she is. She knows my bedroom.”

Kyo sighed. “Okay.”

As much as he now cared for this small girl, he did slightly resent her temporarily taking his spot in Tohru’s bed.

**Author's Note:**

> Though there are a couple minor aspects of this story that have been bubbling in my head for awhile, this one pretty much appeared fully-formed. All I needed to do was type.
> 
> "Nee-chan": Big sister, how Kisa refers to Tohru. "-nii" is an abbreviated honorific that means "brother." A lot of Japanese terms of referring to other people do so in the language of family relations. Older girls are all big sister, older boys are big brother.
> 
> This story takes place in the several month period between Tohru and Kyo's first date in the summer and graduation in the subsequent March. I'm of the belief that Kyo and Tohru did not wait long before regularly sharing a bed, hence the story's final line.
> 
> Why isn't Kisa affected by the rain like Kyo is? Tigers like the water.
> 
> Does Kyo seem out of character? Keep in mind this is post-curse Kyo. The sunshine boy who doesn't hide how much he loves Tohru.


End file.
